Until recently, it was easy to underestimate the effect that young people have on politics. Conventional wisdom tells us that we historically tend not to vote in the same numbers as older generations, that we often don’t have a great deal money or influence to donate to campaigns, and that we’re barred by our age from running for political office. But if the past few months have taught us anything, it's that our country's youth is a political force to be reckoned with.
According to Pew Research Center, Gen Z and Millenials significantly outvoted older generations in the 2018 midterm elections–a fact that is especially impressive considering that this was the first election that many members of Gen Z were able to participate in. Gen Z is the most likely to support the idea of an activist government, with 70% of surveyed members upholding that the government should do more to solve societal problems.
Younger generations are also more likely to be openly accepting of the ways in which American society is progressing: Majorities among Gen Z and Millennials say that increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States is a good thing, while older generations appear less convinced. Furthermore, young people are more likely to have a positive view of interracial and same–sex marriage, to believe that climate change is anthropogenic, and to call for better treatment of people who don't identify as a man or woman than their older counterparts.
But what exactly is steering Gen Z's political values away from the traditional mold? As Pew Research Center recently reported, Gen Z is on track to be both the most racially and ethnically diverse generation and the most educated generation we have seen. However, these aren't the only factors that are driving the political activism of this generation.
A key difference between Gen Z and the slightly older Millennial generation lies in our digitally–driven upbringings. Gen Z was never afforded the illusion that everything was fine, even during our early childhoods. In the nineteen years that I and many of my peers have been alive, we’ve witnessed the endless so–called War on Terror, two recessions, a rapidly changing climate, a burgeoning civil rights movement–so on and so forth. Thanks to the internet, we knew that all this was happening before we were old enough to effectively process what it meant.
Social media has also changed the way that America's youth thinks and acts in the area of politics. Donation links for bail funds and petitions to indict officers involved in the brutalizing or killing of people of color circulated around Instagram and Twitter as users made posts in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and defunding local police departments. Teens were at the front lines of protests that erupted across the country, with many of them taking to social media to share their experiences and to document state violence against protesters in real time. Hundreds of thousands of TikTok users registered for tickets to Trump’s kickoff campaign event in Tulsa–with no plans of attending–in a large–scale "trolling" of the Trump administration.
One thing that particularly stuck out amongst this mass politic al movement was the groundswell of pride in our generation, with sound bytes like “Gen Z will change the world” and “I love Gen Z” repeatedly appearing as a lone positive sentiment among an otherwise overwhelming amount of disillusionment.
But this level of political engagement should come as no surprise. Our generation grew up reading and watching dystopian bildungsroman narratives where time and time again, societies brought to ruin by totalitarian governments were liberated by the bold and righteous actions of teenagers. In most of these stories, Divergent, The Hunger Games, and The Maze Runner, to name a few, teenage protagonists come of age when they realize the deep injustices that plague their societies and form an opposition to the ruling regime.
Research has found that subjects who watched clips from popular dystopian films–specifically Divergent and The Hunger Games–were about eight percent more likely to agree with the idea that violence could be necessary to achieve political justice. However, the researchers were careful not to suggest that fiction alone could lead to action; instead, they argued that it only increases openness to use a wider range of tactics in response to real–life situations of injustice.
But for a generation that is so attuned to what’s wrong with the world vis–à–vis a constant media overload, it doesn’t take much to cross the line between frustration and action. 41% of attendees at recent protests against police brutality and racism were aged 18–29, despite being only 19% of the overall U.S. population, while direct action to bring attention to climate change is most frequently led by people younger than 25–empowered in large part by the visibility of their work on social media.
Ultimately, only time will tell how much Gen Z will really change the world. Certainly one generation can’t singlehandedly fix every problem plaguing our society. But if what we’ve done already is any indication, it seems like we’re only getting started.
